Adams Floating Theater

Maryland Historical Society

From 1914 to 1941, the James Adams Floating Theatre brought live performances to audiences along the Atlantic coast. Kern and Hammerstein’s musical Show Boat may have been set on that “old man river,” the Mississippi, but the vessel that inspired the musical spent much of its time roaming the Chesapeake Bay. During its 27 seasons, the boat traveled as far north as Camden, New Jersey, and as far south as Merrit Island, Florida.

James Adams, a showman who had made his fortune on the vaudeville and carnival circuits, decided to create the first showboat on salt water in 1913. He hired Bill Chauncey of Washington, North Carolina, to construct a barge large enough to house both a theatre and lodging for an entire company of traveling performers. The 436-ton vessel was 128.3 feet long and 34 feet wide, with an auditorium that seated 850 audience members; the auditorium seated whites, while the balcony was reserved for African Americans patrons.

Like the showboats that traveled the rivers of the Midwest, the James Adams Floating Theatre operated in the tradition of the touring repertoire company. These troupes stayed at each town for about a week and performed a different play every night. Each performer specialized in a particular type of character and performed some variation on that character in every play. The companies played primarily to small town and rural audiences. Adams was sensitive to the values of these audiences and presented family-oriented productions that he claimed were “high class, moral, clean and refined.”

Adams toured with his floating theatre until 1917, when he handed the management over to his brother Selba. Other Adams family members on board included their fun-loving youngest sister, Beulah. Known as the “Mary Pickford of the Chesapeake,” Beulah spent 21 years as the ingénue of the company. Her husband, Charlie Hunter, initially served as a character actor in the company, but by 1920 he was also directing all the plays. It was during Hunter’s tenure as artistic director that Edna Ferber spent time on board in order to conduct research for her novel Show Boat. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II also visited the James Adams Floating Theatre before creating their musical adaptation of the novel.

In 1933, James Adams sold the theatre to Nina Howard of St. Michael’s, Maryland, who purchased it for her adopted son Milford Seymoure to manage. Howard and Seymoure changed the name of the craft to the Original Show Boat. They also made several artistic changes by hiring a union company, allowing unmarried female performers to join the troupe, and adding chorus girls to their performances.

One high point of the Howard era was the boat’s only Baltimore appearance. In late 1939, the company enjoyed a sensational run of nearly 12 weeks in the Baltimore harbor, consisting of eight different shows--this was the longest run in the showboat’s history. Despite that success, the heyday of the showboat had passed. In 1941, Howard sold the vessel to E. H. Braswell of Savannah, who planned to use the floating theatre as a cargo barge. However, before he had a chance to convert the boat to its new role, it caught fire and was destroyed, thus ending a most colorful period of early twentieth century theatrical history.

Gillespie, C. Richard. The James Adams Floating Theatre. Centreville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 1991.